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There is a further observation to be made concerning Serial Vision.Although from a scientific or commercial point of view the town may bea unity, from our optical viewpoint we have split it into two elements:the existing view and the emerging view. In the normal way this is anaccidental chain of events and whatever significance may arise out of thelinking of views will be fortuitous. Suppose, however, that we take overthis linking as a branch of the art of relationship; then we are finding atool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into acoherent drama. The process of manipulation has begun to turn theblind facts into a taut emotional situation.
Despite being blind in one eye, he was a tremendous artist and draughtsman. During the Second World War he was declared medically unfit for military service and instead designed factories and Ministry of Information exhibitions, before going to Barbados with the colonial service in 1944 to plan self-help housing and schools in the British West Indies.
Shortly afterwards Cullen was commissioned to paint a mural in the reception area of Westville (now Greenside) Primary School in Shepherd’s Bush. Thomas Gordon Cullen was born in Otley, Yorkshire on the 9th August 1914, the son of a Methodist minister. He studied architecture and draughtsmanship at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London and subsequently worked as a draughtsman in various architects’ offices including that of Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton, but he never qualified or practised as an architect. Until such happy day arrives when people in the street throw theircaps in the air at the sight of a planner (the volume of sardonic laughteris the measure of your deprivation) as they now do for footballers andpop singers, a holding operation in two parts will be necessary. Propriety stems from the mutualrespect which a true society shouldmaintain amongst its members, whichis not quite the same thing asmanners. Our example is a somewhatastonishing shop fascia with letteringwhich might be thought out of placein a modest street, but since it is anexample of the metalworker's craft it
A reminder to civic gardeners iscontained in the picture of a seat atBidston Hill, which carries with it nohint that the land is occupied ormunicipally digested. Here is a seatwhich might have been left by atraveller. In writing an introduction to this edition of Townscape I find little toalter in the attitude expressed in the original introduction written tenyears ago. Again the assertion, This is That, canbe seen in examples of animism, thesuggestion that a door is a face and,more directly, that a window is amouth, can sometimes induce a senseof strangeness but can be very annoying when it occurs unwanted. His archive, consisting of 125 boxes, is a very diverse and rich collection, and includes records of projects he worked on, his work with The Architectural Review and his time in other countries including Barbados, France and India. Between 1944 and 1946 he worked in the planning office of the Development and Welfare Department in Barbados, as his poor eyesight meant that he was unfit to serve in the British armed forces. He later returned to London and joined the Architectural Review journal, first as a draughtsman and then as a writer on planning policies. There he produced a large number of influential editorials and case studies on the theory of planning and the design of towns. Many improvements in the urban and rural environment in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also involved in the Festival of Britain in 1951. One of the few large scale Cullen works on public display is the mural in the foyer of the Erno Goldfinger designed Greenside Primary School in west London, completed in 1953. [4] His 1958 ceramic mural in Coventry, depicting the history of the city and its post-war regeneration, is on a much grander scale though now relocated away from its original central location. [5] Illustrations [ edit ]
scale on planOf special interest to the planner isthe sense of scale in the question oftown layout. The case quoted here byEbbe Sadolin (A Wallderer ill Shade, shelter, amenity and convenience are the usual causes ofpossession. The emphasizing of suchplaces by some permanent indicationserves to create an image of thevarious kinds of occupation in thetown, so that instead of a completelystreamlined and fluid out-of-doors amore static and occupied environment
without the ingredient of sensuousenjoyment the practice of architecturemust inevitably degenerate into littlemore than a sordid routine, or at themost the exercise of mere intellectualcleverness. In this light, the examplesof texture here can be gladlyaccepted as a stimulation to be foundin the ordinary scene.
This is the watetshed. Up to thispoint we have presented the environment as occupied territory serving thelegitimate social and business needsof people and irrigated by trafficroutes. Now arises the natural corollary that if the outdoors is colonizedthen the people who do this willattempt to humanize the landscape injust the same way they already do forthe interiors. At this point we canfind little difference between the two,and the terms Indoor Landscape andOutdoor Room make sense. In thetop picture can be seen the patternedpavement (tloorscape) and arcade.Over this is a building in which aman lives whilst the vault of the skyspans over. To the right an avenueof trees leads out to the hills. Herein this picture of an interior is all thespatial quality of a landscape. Below,the diners are gathered togetherunder the ceiling lights and theHouses of Parliament sit on theperimeter like a model on the mantelpiece. In this Swedish example trees havebeen used as a sort of living wallpaper to decorate the vast geometryof the grain silos.